


Stand at the End for the Beginning

by Metallic_Sweet



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: (perhaps it is better to say lack of gender than implying any gender at all), Gen, Immortality, Nations: How Do They Work, Original Character Death(s), Stationary, Winemaking, gender fluidity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:16:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metallic_Sweet/pseuds/Metallic_Sweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ah," says a voice to your side, familiar so much so that it lives in your very skin, "who died?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stand at the End for the Beginning

You trace a finger over the wood, over the grooves etched in by weather and time.

"Fancy meeting you here."

The ghost reaches up, tucks a stray lock of long hair behind a smooth-shelled ear. Lips, smooth and cupid bowed, lift into a smile that doesn't reach the eyes.

"I am always here," the ghost says, looking to the table, your hand, your wrinkled skin. "I will always be here."

There's some reassurance in that, some warning as well. You shift your weight on your cane, feel your old bones creak. The ghost smiles a bit more, lips warm and red, and you have to ask.

"Will you remember me?"

"When you're gone and dead?" the ghost finishes, head tilting slightly to the side, like there's actual contemplation there; even after eighty-four years you cannot be completely sure. "For a time," is the conclusion after a long moment, straightening and shrugging fluidly. "I cannot say how long."

You swallow, force yourself to nod. That'll have to be enough, and it's rare for the ghost to not embellish, so, perhaps, this conversation is having some effect. You watch the ghost drift to the grape vines, touch the very young fruit carefully, gently, almost reverently, like a lover. That vine will likely outlive you.

"I love you," you say, quiet and calm, but cool because the warmth has long gone dormant in you; what you speak is less a confession than a simple truth.

Slowly, the ghost turns back, long fingers lingering on the vine, but eyes on you. "I am France," the ghost says, smooth and liquid and cool; "It is my due."

 

You huddle on the balcony overlooking the Seine. You bought this apartment thirty-eight years ago, moved into it only four. Right now, your neighbors think you young; in four more, they will begin to think your unchanging appearance queer. You will move again, to another part of the city, to one of your many other apartments, and start anew there. Or, more exactly, start again, like a reboot of some sort of entertainment franchise, creating the same kinds of relationships but in a slightly different place and time.

"Ah," says a voice to your side, familiar so much so that it lives in your very skin, "who died?"

A question that on human lips could be sympathetic or sarcastic but is just a blank inquiry on theirs. You look away from your Eiffel Tower, from the city lights, to the familiar, over-dressed bulk dwarfing the double doorway back into your dark apartment.

"Someone I once loved," you answer, rising to your feet and brushing your thighs absently for dust. "What brings you here, Russia?"

"You love too much," Russia says without accusation; again, just bare truth. "I hoped to share dinner as you suggested last we met."

You smile, move towards Russia and then around into your apartment, leaning to turn on the lights as you head inside. "Well, I would hardly be gracious to turn down an invitation I myself extended."

This is also true. After all, this is not impolite, at least for them. It is not breaking and entering because what sort of privacy have they ever really had? They are not at war, and they are on good terms, or, at least, better terms than they have been in the not-so-distant past. Besides, it isn't as if Russia is a bad guest as some others tend to be. Russia has brought bread and dessert in a basket left in the kitchen, and that is far more than Prussia has brought in decades.

(Not that Prussia's lack of housewarming is a new feature. Not that Prussia has the resources to be generous at all. But this is neither here nor there.)

"England brings Burberry and McQueen," you say as you retrieve sea bass from the refrigerator.

Russia snorts, reaches out and twists a lock of your hair from your eyes, gathers it with the rest and produces a red ribbon from up the heavy coat sleeve. You smile at your reflections in the glass of the kitchen window, watch the ribbon draw your hair into a low queue.

"Are you going to powder my hair as well?"

This earns you a fuller laugh, more indulgent, less jealous. "No. That was a silly practice."

You shrug. "It had its charms," you point out, skinning the fish. "Like most things, it became too commonplace. Too boring."

"Boring," Russia echos, like it's privately amusing somehow. "It was troublesome."

"All things are troublesome," you point out, a fair assessment that earns you a nod in agreement.

Dinner passes pleasantly, so much so it's almost farcical. This doesn't escape either of you, and it is difficult not to break the comfortable silences and banal conversation with real, ridiculous laughter. When the dinner dishes are in the sink and the living room has become a smoking lounge, the two of you finally share the laugh around Russia's Sobranies.

"Remember," you say, a little slurred from the second bottle of wine, "when we lost our horses and our boots and that bear over the Danube?"

"Oh," Russia murmurs, eyes dancing with mirth. "Oh, yes. My boss was ever so angry about that, but he couldn't do anything because we were in public."

"He turned purple," you giggle. "Actual steam escaped his nose."

Eventually, the laughter subsides, and companionable silence settles in. You have this sort of relationship with only a select few who have been in or are in your life. You had it with Jeanne, with Louis XIV, fleetingly with other humans who mattered at the right points in time and thus were destined for history. Perhaps you could have had it with Prussia if it hadn't been for the Holy Roman and then Germany. You have it with Russia and with Spain, despite all that has come and gone, and, once in a great while, with England and Canada. You don't understand England, despite all this time, nor Canada, who spent too much time with England; Spain and Russia, since they appeared in your life, have never quite changed as to become entirely unrecognizable to you. What that says about you could be many things, but that's what you are designed for anyways.

"Can you stay the night?" you ask as it begins to grow truly late, and the wine begins to make your eyes heavy.

You watch thick lips stretch in a deep yawn. "I suppose," Russia says, and if it was anyone else, you would swear it's an attempt to be coy.

"Will you?" you clarify, grinning now, a little soppily.

Russia chuckles, a low, coughing laugh. "Stop it, France, you are drunk."

"You spend," you murmur, "most of your time drunk."

"Ah," Russia says, and simply smiles.

 

You look up from the register, towards the doorway and the chime. The man (or woman? Sometimes your senses tell you both and none at all) isn't smiling today, strangely. There's a distracted air about this person who appears regularly in your shop, constantly in need of new stationary, ink, and any other manner of correspondence implements. Usually, there's a lusty smile and dancing light to those unusually blue eyes, not this odd melancholy that seems to be Bonnefoy today.

"May I help you, Monsieur Bonnefoy?"

Those eyes blink, and, for a fleeting moment, there's an owlish look to them, wide and expansive and piercing. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up; it makes your stomach twist low inside of yourself. Red lips quirk upwards at your reaction, and the eyes sparkle but without the usual brightness.

"Oh, I do apologize for my rudeness," Bonnefoy says, never failing to be utterly polite, "and it seem I'll be further inconveniencing you. I need mourning stationary, which, I've come to understand, is out of fashion, by Friday."

You smile, hopefully in a reassuring manner; Friday is two days away, but, for Bonnefoy, it shouldn't be any trouble at all. "I do believe it can be done," you say, gently, as you bring up appropriate designs to modify in the heavy store binder; "I am very sorry to hear you've recently experienced loss."

Bonnefoy's polite smile smooths a bit as does the sharpness that had snuck into those usually light and playful eyes. "It is not a new thing," the words state matter of factly, "but I do appreciate your sentiment."

You can't help but feel so very sad then. You are not young, and you have known loss, but the casual, blasé manner that Bonnefoy refers to the situation makes you suspect death and mourning is a much more frequently intimate affair here than you would wish upon anyone. For all the apparent youth, the diction and bearing that Bonnefoy chooses to use is more like someone your age or even older. Bonnefoy is not exactly what you would call a kind or even a nice person, but this does not make for a cruel or even coarse nature. It seems more that the casualness that often seeps into Bonnefoy's opinions and outlook are overly practical, but in a particular manner that feels like that practicality was beaten into a dreamer faced by irrevocable evidence of the dream's impossbility. 

A low hum draws you out of your thoughts, and you find red lips tilted in a sad smile. "You pity me," Bonnefoy says, and there is no denying the fact; your silence earns a soft, breathy laugh. "Do not. There is no need."

You watch the way fingers trace the cardstock you present for color choices, the pad of a forefinger hissing slightly along the surface. You had never noticed how calloused those long fingers are, nor that the knuckles have numerous faint scars. You have never wondered what Bonnefoy does for a living, despite the apparent youthful age and probably substantial income. Perhaps you have been remiss; perhaps that is why Bonnefoy appears to you.

"It will all be ready by Friday morning at shop opening," you say after all of the details are worked out. "Do you need anything else?"

For a moment, Bonnefoy is silent, eyes downcast, looking through the sample print laid out on the table. The melancholy seeps into the air again, and suddenly everything feels so very old and worn and weathered in this shop of dying tradition and industry. Bonnefoy seems to love and hate it all so in way that you can't even begin to comprehend; it is as if this person stood once at the beginning and now again at the end. 

Slowly, Bonnefoy draws up, curls calloused fingers away, and the melancholy is gone, replaced with the insubstantial politeness you've always known and admired and never understood.

"No, thank you," red lips murmur; "There is nothing more I require."


End file.
